Should I Get Both of Dirac's Quantum Mechanics Books?

[doggydan42]

Hello,

I remembered once hearing of a must-have quantum mechanics book by Paul Dirac. I don't remember if it was his Principles of QM or Lectures on QM. Based on the table of contents, I believe it was the Principles of QM book; however, looking at both I was thinking about getting his Lectures on QM. Is it worth getting both books?

Any thoughts on both these books would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[dextercioby]

Get both books as a "must have" in a (future) physicist's personal library. Dirac was almost 50 when he singlehandedly derived the theory of mechanical systems with constraints, so his "Lectures of Quantum Mechanics" is the birth book on this highly important topic, pretty much as "Principles of Quantum Mechanics 1st Ed.1930 was the first lucid exposé of QM, with his pretty abstract and unfriendly notation (all those xis made my eyes hurt).

 

[doggydan42]

Get both books as a "must have" in a (future) physicist's personal library. Dirac was almost 50 when he singlehandedly derived the theory of mechanical systems with constraints, so his "Lectures of Quantum Mechanics" is the birth book on this highly important topic, pretty much as "Principles of Quantum Mechanics 1st Ed.1930 was the first lucid exposé of QM, with his pretty abstract and unfriendly notation (all those xis made my eyes hurt).

I will definitely get both. At what level are both books? Is it at the level of Sakurai, Griffiths, in between, or more advanced?

 

[vanhees71]

I'd say the level is like Sakurai (and in contradistinction to Griffiths rigorous enough to be understandable), and it's among the best textbooks on QT ever written (I only now "The Principles of Quantum Mechanics" though. I guess, I've to look at the other book too!

 

[hilbert2]

I remember reading Dirac's book in the university library and I could literally sense from the text the excitement of the scientists of the time about the new quantum theory with lots of unknowns to be discovered. Unfortunately there isn't anything equivalent to that in today's physical sciences. The unknowns are mostly in specialized fields that only a fraction of physicists really understand.